Associated Content and Others: Why You Shouldn't "Give" Your Content Away

I found out today exactly WHY I do not generally use sites like Associated Content or eHow to make a little extra money between gigs or even just for fun. Some people swear by these sites to earn a little extra. They keep paying over time, and if you write enough, apparently you can make quite a bit of money. Also, they help get your name on Google more, and keep you writing and it's one more way to market yourself.

BUT there's one caveat that really keeps me from submitting to these sites...

As I was browsing submission guidelines to various publications I came across a pub that paid $150-$300 per article. So, a looooooong time ago on a similar article site as Associated Content, I posted an article that I realized today was a perfect fit for this publication.

And of course, guess what? They do not accept previously published material, online or otherwise. Now, I actually still own all the rights, unlike the various rights options you have at AC, but I still was unable to submit this article because it was previously published. Not a cool feeling at all.

Now, I suppose I could revise it, but the type of article it is and involving personal experience, it just didn't work that way. Years ago when this article was put on the web it never entered my mind that I would use it later and here I am kicking myself because I could have possibly sold it for a whole lot more than I originally got for it.

Before you submit to these sort of sites like eHow and AC, hold onto it for awhile and look around for other possible submission options. There is a need for all sorts of articles out there and even if you only get $15 for it, that's likely still more than you'd get at AC or others, not to mention it would probably be a bit more credible of a source that you can send potential clients to.

Nothing against AC, eHow or the like, just exhaust your options before you virtually give your content away. You may be seriously kicking yourself someday if you don't.

Freelance Writing and Clients: Effective Communication

As freelance writers we work online A LOT. We do much of our communication through email, forums, IM, contact forms, etc. If you haven't been living under a rock out in the boondocks you likely have used email and you know that the words you are trying to convey in email aren't always interpreted the way you want or expect them to be. This can result in a multitude of problems with clients including: incomplete projects, incorrect projects and on the far end of things, loss of a client.

If you are working with a client solely through email what may seem clear as an OCD's window to your client may be as clear as my nicotine-covered windshield on a sunny day to you. And it goes both ways of course. You have clients who need to provide you with the information you need to complete their project, but they may not know how to communicate that effectively. This is where you swoop in and save the day (or at least your client's project so you can be paid), you need to become the authority on effective communication and gently lead your client toward the answers you need. Yes, clients are sometimes high-maintenance. And that's ok. Most people are about one thing or another.

So here's what you, as a freelance writer, can do to coax those words out of your client:

1) Number your questions and separate them by paragraph breaks. If you are finding yourself emailing your client over and over asking the same questions because for some reason they don't seem to be reading your questions it may be because those questions are tied up in paragraphs. People, especially busy people, have this tendency to scan paragraphs looking for the info they want or need. This is perhaps what you have done to get down here to these points, scanned for the bold and numbers. Separating things, numbering them and even putting them in bold drive your reader and client to the most important parts and can help you get the answers they need. It's much easier for them to add in some answers real quick if you've already given them the room to do so.

2) The "Fluff Factor": This is a lesson in customer service. I worked at a bank a while ago and my boss was a big fan of the "fluff factor" when emailing internal and external customers. Our emails were tailored to prevent the recipient from getting defensive in any way. Often consisting of smiley faces, nothing in all capital letters because that can be patronizing or seem like yelling, lots of "Thanks!" and friendly exclamation points, not the ones that rhetorically state: "what the #%$^ are you doing!?!?!?" But even the most well-intentioned emails can be misconstrued and put certain people on the defense which causes them to shut down their receptivity. All in all, it's just good practice to be professional and friendly...although your email doesn't have to look like a high-school girl's notebook with flowers, hearts and smiley faces drawn all over the place.

3)Separate your subjects into separate emails. For efficiency and calarity's sake I like to get as much said as possible in emails. Anything that I can think of that impacts communication with that person goes into those emails. I may have several questions, then some ideas, then some contract details to work out, or whatever else. However, I find that when I separate these topics into respective emails I am much more likely to get the responses I want and need. But don't bombard your client with five emails at once, that will just annoy. Prioritize them and send one at a time and let the responses and communication flow naturally from one topic to the next.

A lot of people don't have these communication problems with their clients, but I find that I do quite frequently. Many of the clients I work with don't know exactly what I do for them, they may think I just write their content so they may not understand why I need to know these things in order to complete their project. They are not freelance writers themselves and often just don't get what we do. They just know they need their content.

Blogging: How to keep up your blogs and keep stress levels low

Lately I've been having an issue with keeping up my blogs. I either feel like I don't have time, or I'm exhausted or my brain is in a fog and I can't string thoughts together easily.
So to help myself I'm trying something new and thought it may be helpful in some way for you as well if you don't already have a process.

I've started creating an on going list of drafts in the posting area back here behind-the-scenes. Every time I get an idea for a post I come over here and simple just type the title in or a few words to get me going and it usually spawns several other ideas to which I will do the same thing. Then I just log on and type in a few lines here and there or if I'm feeling focused I finish a whole post.

Right now I have 10 posts sitting back here waiting to be written and it takes a load off knowing if my brain is in a fog I've already made things a lot easier. I can just pop in and write a bit here and there.

I'm constantly looking for ways to decrease my stress level and make things easier and more efficient. Although we may work at home and some people think we don't do anything all day, it's the same as running any business and there's always stress of some kind no matter what.

What do you do to help ensure your stress level is low?

"When it Rains, it Pours" and probably some other cliches

My mother always said: "don't look a gift horse in the mouth."
As freelancers starting out we crave work. Some of us will take anything, work for free, or what about all those "Elancers" out there who are bidding to write 30 articles for five bucks? I certainly don't have that much time for WAY less than minimum wage. There comes a time when you find you have TOO much work and what do you do? Turn it down? Don't look a gift horse in the mouth, right? Feast or Famine...when it rains it pours and so on. At times like this though, if you want to keep your clients and continue to gain new ones you may want to consider alternatives when you are bombarded by work. It's not good for so many reasons: possible burn-out, stress, less focus on each project, etc. It can end up hurting you more than helping you.

There was a recent post on Avid Writer's blog in which she talks about outsourcing your writing when you just have too much to do. Some people have quite a few freelancers they work with and pass work out to. This could be a great option for you, especially if you are finding you are not getting in enough time for marketing, accounting and other administrative tasks.

Here's another option: outsource your administrative tasks. In his book Getting Started as a Freelance Writer, Robert W. Bly talks about how he outsources all of his Fed Ex/mailing, his accounting, research, etc. I think this is a great idea, it allows you to retain your actual freelance writing work and your clients while someone else takes care of the tasks you don't have time for or don't want to do. Get a college student who perhaps wants to learn the business (I think I've been watching too much Sopranos because that somehow sounded "mafioso-ish" to me) or maybe you even get one who is working toward a marketing degree to help you out with some marketing. Get them to help you out a few hours a week, just enough for beer money and Waffle House. Call it an internship of sorts.

Point is, you always have options instead of overloading yourself to the point of mental collapse. That's probably one of the worst things you can do as a freelance writer. Just wanted to reiterate the point and make a few other suggestions after reading Avid Writer's blog post awhile ago since I think it's very important for all of us to keep a level head!

Finally added a Contact button on the top right....

Please feel free to contact me at any time regarding freelance writing questions, comments or whatever is on your mind. Tell me how I'm doing, tell me what you want to see more of or you can just write to gripe about anything on this planet--there's plenty of material out there for that! Seriously, anything that's on your mind, but also, to help me maintain this blog as what the readers want to know maybe throw in a little query here and there.

The death of glossies? I don't think so!

With all of the newspaper layoffs at The LA Times, NYT and others, and Conde Nast publications having fallen significantly in ad revenue this first half, it appears it's a sign of the times that print is all moving to the cheaper online distribution practices and out of your mailbox, whether you want it or not. Bad for staff writers, sort-of great for freelancers...although many writers still love the print, it's sexier, it's comforting, it's some writer's milk and honey, writers love the print.

Are we watching the death of print? Will we wake up and discover in the very near future that Ray Bradbury was a modern-day Job? Or did someone just need to come up with a brilliant solution for all the overstock magazines laying around....

In an article on Foliomag.com, Dylan Stableford writes "If you can make a PDF, you can now publish a magazine," talking about Derek Powazek's genius brainchild MagCloud, a print-on-demand magazine publishing solution that is currently in beta. If you are a freelance writer who has always wanted to publish your own magazine but were afraid of the stacks and stacks of undistributed copies or high printing costs with no financial backing, then this may be the solution for you. Powazek wrote in an e-mail to FOLIO:. “MagCloud wants to be the people's printing press.” Not only that, but all you have to do is upload your magazine, MagCloud handles the rest as stated on Foliomag.com: "printing, mailing, subscription management, and more.”

So you can basically kick back and focus on marketing your mag and leave all the after-design grunt work to Powazek and MagCloud. Genius.

Click here for Derek Powazek's Blog Post Announcement
Click here for a Foliomag.com interview: An Interview with the Dudes Behind MagCloud

Does Your Website Reflect Your Writing?

For awhile now I have been noticing websites that offer a certain service, but that service is not reflected on their website.

I came across a few web design sites and immediately turned away because they were hard to navigate, hard to read, had way too much content all over the place, disorganized, links I wanted weren't in plain view, the design wasn't creative or it was TOO creative and there were no readily visible links. I imagine the bounce rates on these sites are high, but I could be wrong.

If I were to hire someone to do a service for me then it should be clear on their homepage whether they would probably be a good fit for me in order for me to move into the site.

The same thing goes for writers. I see freelance writers who list SEO content on their website as one of their services--sometimes their specialization, yet their own site is not optimized. If one of your visitors notices this, you will likely lose some credibility and a potential client. Even if you have great examples of your SEO content in your online portfolio on your site, the potential client probably won't get that far. Your site and specifically your homepage is often your first impression, so make sure you are delivering to yourself what you are offering to your customers.

Transition to full-time freelance writing is in full swing...

It's becoming official. I have now cut my hours at my day job to 7am-noon and am home by 12:15 everyday to do freelance work and am now freed up to have a full-time schedule. Up until now I have been working from the time I got home at 4pm until I went to bed (with the exception of a meal in there and maybe a television show) and mostly all day on weekends. It was mostly alright with me, I love what I do and I even love the grunt-work aspect, the organizing, the billing, the finances, etc. so it didn't seem all that bad. I haven't felt like it was taking up all my time, I haven't dreaded doing my freelance work, and my Dude is usually busy playing Xbox or his work he brought home from the office. But now...now I am free to actually schedule myself, have quiet time just me and my computer and write like crazy. Then I still have time to hang out with my Dude. Also, I'm pretty much making the same as I did at my full-time day job so all is good so far.

Bullies in the School Yard

A huge pet peeve of mine lately is watching freelance writers, on their blogs, make fun of newbies that have contacted them about freelance advice. I'm not even going to give you the sites or post examples because I'd be doing something along the same lines, you'll see them at some point if you're actively in the freelance writing blogosphere. I just want to make a few points about this.

Perhaps you are a newbie, or maybe you can remember back to when you were first starting out, imagine that you have contacted a freelance writer regarding advice, if you have done so then you are probably reading their blog here and there (if not regularly) because you perhaps hold their opinion/experience in some sort of high regard and believe they have something to teach you. Then soon after you see that they have blogged about you inquiry, perhaps even publishing your email in it's entirety with everything except your name and they are scathingly pointing out all of your typos/misspellings, or making comments that are poking fun at your questions, your comments, etc. Even if others don't know it was you who wrote that email, YOU know it and I personally would be embarrassed and maybe even wonder if I should get into freelancing at all.

I have absolutely no respect for freelance writers who do this. Not to mention, I've noticed at least one who links their freelance writing blog to their professional website and if I were a potential client of theirs and read something like that I'd immediately look elsewhere for my writer.

5 Reasons NOT to make fun of newbies:

1) It's completely unprofessional. You are running a business and unless you are warning your fellow freelancers against a certain "scammer" (see post on Jessica Mousseau a few posts down) you have no business passing public judgment on a fellow freelance writer.
2) You are a teacher whether you know it or not. If you are blogging about freelance writing, you are establishing yourself as an expert in that field and your purpose is to give advice. You took on that responsibility when you wrote your first freelance writing blog post, so live up to it. Encourage newbies or find a way to gently point out what they could improve, and answer questions with patience and compassion for them. They are starting a new venture, which can be scary and intimidating.
3) You were once that person. No matter what, when you started freelancing you most certainly had questions and how would you have felt if your questions had been publicly ridiculed? People need help and experience is the best kind of help people can get.
4) You are human. You most certainly made mistakes when starting out and most likely still do because YOU ARE HUMAN. Perhaps a newbie had typos/mistakes in their email, gently point out that they may want to work on that and be sure that all of their communication with others is virtually error-free--they probably already know they make typos. I personally make typos all the time, I know this, I don't really need to be reminded publicly, a personal email will do just fine, thank you.
5) You reek of insecurity. To me, this is the worst. If you are making fun of someone else, it makes you seem as if you think you are better than another. If you appear arrogant, well, arrogance is just simply the biggest, clearest window into your insecurity. Maybe you make fun to discourage the writer because you can't take the competition? I don't really know, all I know is that if you ARE trying to cut the competition out there than you are probably the one needing advice because you should just be focused on being the best you can be. If you are confident in your abilities you won't need to worry about competition, you'll have plenty of work and no time to play petty games. If you are confident in your ability you won't need to publicly make fun of people to make yourself feel better about yourself. Who cares if you don't make typos or ask what you may call "stupid questions"?

I have no respect for those people who make fun of others and I feel sorry for them that they can't seem to be more understanding and empathetic. They are likely hurting themselves and their business whether they know it or not.

I hated middle school and high school and don't really care to go back, so let's just all be respectable as writers and just make sure we're doing our best in all arenas and having some compassion for others.

Freelance Writing: SALES

I've mentioned before about how when you're a freelancer you are every department. Marketing, HR, Accounting, etc. What I have recently found out is that you are also your own sales department.
I have ALWAYS hated salespeople and although it's one of the highest paying fields that doesn't require a degree, I have never been the type to be able to sell things. When I was a telemarketer in college we had scripts of things to say in different situations of rejection, as soon as the words "no thank you" came out of their mouth we were supposed to launch right into another paragraph to get them to change their minds. Not really my style, I'm a little more low-key, a little more chill...ok, I'm a flippin' introvert who absolutely cannot push anything on anyone.

BUT I found that I'm actually not too bad at sales in the freelance world. Recently I scored a gig writing some web/SEO content for a web design company. In reviewing their site I noticed they had a blog, I sent an email to the client letting her know I'd noticed the blog, would love to help her write articles and could send her my rates if she was interested. She said she was. WHAT? I had to read it again... did I really just cross-sell something?
THEN, since hers is a company that designs websites she also offered to start offering copy writing to her clients that she could then pass on to me...SAY WHAT?

This is by far the best client I've ever had and I've been pretty lucky in the client category so far.
I've learned that it definitely pays to cross-sell your services and put it out there that you are looking for a lasting professional relationship with your clients. Maybe most of you have been doing this, but if you haven't then please do. Look around their site and see if there are any other services you could sell them on, then like a good salesperson, perhaps even offer them a discount for it.

Your freelance writing name

Part of marketing yourself as a freelance writer is branding yourself. Part of branding yourself is making sure Google can find you.
I recently found that my name in Google comes up as a pizza joint named Courtney's in Latham, New York. Along with a few other Courtney's Facebook profiles (not mine of course), a Myspace profile, a soccer player, some kid who is on honor roll (glad one of us has been) and finally my high school graduation announcement. Ok, so I was on honor roll once or twice...I think. Ok, let's just say I made nothing but A's in a few classes and read books behind my binder in all the others.

So what to do? It's not quite an issue yet, I haven't finished my professional website, I just started the transition into FULL-TIME freelance writing about two months ago (previously it was sporadic freelance) and I just started utilizing blogs and posting to forums, etc. So no worries yet.

Courtney Latham isn't a hugely popular name, but it's popular enough to require a little more effort on my part to get in the top rankings on Google.
OR, another option is choosing a pen name of course, a bit of a romantic notion if you sway that way...OR you can jsut come up with variations of your name. This is especially important if your name is John Smith, there will of course be countless Pocahontas links before yours even remotely comes up unless you are already a celebrity, in which case, why would you be reading this blog in the first place?

Start Googling variations, how does John C. Smith come up? Or even better: John Z. Smith? How many people do you think have a "Z" initial? Plus you have the added bonus of having this mysterious persona...what's their middle name? Zachariah? Zachius? Zeek? Who knows? The world will be on the edge of their seat trying to figure it out. Alright, maybe not so much, but it helps with Google rankings a bit if you have a variation that fewer people have...less competition and easier to move up in rankings.

Also you need to check to see if that name is available as a domain name, if it is buy it asap whether you will use it or not. Then buy up similar names too if you can. You can check your domain names here.

Also you can check how many people in the U.S. have your name and work off of that, check it out at How Many of Me.

Marketing yourself as a freelance writer

Here is another freelance writing tips excerpt I wrote for a writing contest on Writer's Resources. This one is about marketing yourself as a freelance writer. Click on the links to get the full article.

Pretend you are Robert Scoble Excerpt:

Pretending you are Robert Scoble simply means you should run your freelance writing as a marketing firm. Businesses often have several different departments, as should your freelance business. You sell your own product, you do your own accounting, you perform all administrative tasks, you are your customer service representative and perhaps most importantly, you are your own marketing department.
In theory, your actual billable hours should be about 50% of your time and your marketing should be the other 50% with the rest as overtime…does any freelancer actually only work 40 hours a week? I have a day job as a marketing manager and I’m still putting in over 40 in all the tasks that must be done as a freelancer.
So here are three ideas you should consider about your freelance writing marketing efforts...

More...

Keep that creative mind working

Here's an excerpt of a freelance writing tips article I wrote for a contest on Writer's Resources click on the links to read the full article.

Mind Wandering Excerpt:

Maybe you’ve been here—you have a project due to your editor tomorrow morning and you’ve dabbled at it here and there for a week but now that it’s due tomorrow, it’s crunch time so you spend the entire day forcing words out, backspacing, forcing more words and it’s just not working. You start with a blank document thinking it will help you refocus your thoughts. Nothing. Eventually, in the middle of the night you end up with some semblance of an article that you turn in the next day, not necessarily happy with your work, but just happy to have it done. I’ve so been there. What I found as a remedy surprised me (and stressed me out until I got used to it). When you are trying to focus you are narrowing your mind, forcing it into a box that’s limited by your subject matter...

Read the full article here

Trying to write on a trip....

Ok, so I'm back from a whirlwind trip to Colorado and ready to post! The purpose of my trip was to tie up some loose ends with our previous landlord and get our beautiful deposit back, and plan this long-distance wedding we're trying to plan.
So I take my laptop with every intention of writing at every possible moment, the plane, the airport, the car, morning coffee, the hotel, etc. and so I schlep this 4.4 pound laptop everywhere, go through the irritatingly inconvenient ritual of removing my laptop, shoes, belt, jacket, dignity, jewelry, and everything else short of the under-wire in my bra to get through security--which now in some airports includes some radiation test where you stand in a tube, put your arms in the air so that everyone three rows over and behind you can see your pit stains caused from driving in Houston with no AC in the car, while a glass door slides around you...the cool thing is that you get to see your skeleton and besides the fact that you now notice you probably have scoliosis, it's pretty cool.
So, back to the laptop...I cart it everywhere on my trip, now have knots in my shoulder from doing so and do not have one damn word to show for it. My time was so consumed with appointments and trying to meet with 10 different friends at 10 different times that I didn't have a chance to write at all. Write on the plane, you say? I would have but I was in the middle seat and it really creeps me out when people can easily watch me write and read everything I'm writing. And people do...until I turn to stare at them and they bury their nose back into their crossword puzzle, but I really like avoiding confrontation and I'll still feel like they are watching me and I'll just sit there trying to find something to write that they would be impressed by, just in case I'm sitting next to David Sedaris' publishing folks at Little Brown and they want to offer me a contract. Ha.
There's no point to this, just expressing some freelance frustration. I got a few quips down from conversations that I can use later, but no actual work. Such is the freelance life, I guess.

Why there are freelance writers in the world...

While posting a press release on PR Web for the company I work for I came across a fairly recent press release for a fitness apparel company, who presumably wrote the press release themselves and if they didn't then they should have asked to see samples from their writer or at least skimmed over it before it was submitted...take a look at this line...

"We stand behind all of out items 100 percent. If we would not wear it, we would sell it."

Maybe I missed the point of this company, but I thought the idea was to encourage people to buy their stuff. It hardly inspires confidence in a buyer when it looks like you say you wouldn't wear what you sell (or something along these lines). Not to mention the typo. This is why we have freelance writers in the world, to keep people from making these mistakes that aren't just a little typo but one that changes the whole meaning of your press release. A lot of people probably can guess what they really meant to say, but you shouldn't have to make those readers guess in something that is in quotations from the owner of a company. "Wow" is all I have to say.
Read the whole press release here.

How could anything be as bad as writer's block?

There is such a thing as TOO many ideas. My brain is racing, I need to submit this here, that there, apply for these assignments, post these 35 blog posts that I have in my head (especially my book reviews blog, there's not even ONE up there yet!), start that ebook I've been talking about for a year and read other blogs and comment all while also needing to find time to read and eat and walk the dog and actually look up from my computer to talk to this dude that lives with me, I think he's still my boyfriend at least...he hasn't come home from work yet and it's getting late....
Well, then I sit down to actually start taking care of all this and...NOTHING. I sit down and I stare. Just stare. I don't know where to begin, I don't know which would be best to do first. Then if I actually DO get one started, ideas from another topic start surfacing and I have to go tend those so I don't forget those great one-liners, but then it becomes 15 open word documents of two-sentence pieces. And they don't work just mashed together in some experimental attempt to be like Samuel Beckett. Besides, I'm going to leave that back in my highschool days when I thought I was a 90's beatnik.
Soooooo what I have started doing is keeping a running list then, although not "green", I write each on separate post-it notes and only look at ONE at a time. My brain gets fried trying to view everything I have to do at once and likes it so much better when it thinks it only has to do one thing.
So does anyone else have this problem? And what do you do for it to keep you on task and get it all done? Write like mad? Stare like I do? Give up on the least promising ones and focus more energy on the best?

Jessica Mousseau, what are you thinking?

I don't know if you follow Writers Weekly and I don't know if you have heard of Jessica Mousseau, but Writers Weekly has recently posted a string of emails involving a complaint a writer filed to them involving one Ms. Jessica Mousseau and frankly I am appalled at Mousseau's behavior according to this string of communication. Go ahead and read it, read it ALL, it's so worth it. Go on, I'll wait here...


I am incredibly embarrassed for Ms. Mousseau who doesn't seem to know the first thing about effective communication, the definition of libel, the definition of plagiarism, and seems to have lied about having her degree--and it looks as if she may be lying about other things as well but that's just my opinion and you can read the site and form your own opinions. Just wanted to put this out there in case Jessica Mousseau was someone to watch out for while in your freelancing travels looking for gigs on the internet.

Feel free to let me know if you think I have been "libelous". But please make sure you know what it means: Libel: A false publication, as in writing, print, signs, or pictures, that damages a person's reputation. What many people forget is that libel is only libel if it's false. Opinions expressed do not fall into this category, opinions are "non-actionable." Everything written in this post is the author's (me) express opinion.

Regaining that creative flow

I subscribe to Pamela Slim's blog and newsletter Escape From Cubicle Nation and yesterday's newsletter was about life getting in the way of creativity entitled, "How to be creative when you feel like a brick of concrete" and I could have sworn Pamela Slim had been stalking me yesterday.

I have been running on manic energy trying to get my blogs launched, trying to get my freelance business going, it's all I've thought about, it's been my entire life for awhile now but it's all logistical stuff, I've not been as successful in my creativity lately because I'm too busy trying to take care of all these smaller matters that some part of me thought was going to allow me to be creative...and it may, but I need to slow down and back off because they are really just a distraction. My mind tricked me! I thought I was doing all this in the name of creativity and really it was just a clever ploy to get me to put off writing.

Slim wrote mostly about other aspects of life getting us caught up in the whirlwind: family, pets, other jobs until we're so exhausted that we just want to get away and we think that by sitting on the couch watching hours of TV or cuddling up with a bottle of wine will do it but that just robs us of creativity even more. (wow, what a run-on!)

She offers suggestions of exercise, getting away with the purpose of writing or engaging your creativity, helping others, etc.

I have things that I do personally to regain my creativity, that I would share now if I didn't have to get ready for my regular job. So, I will post more about that later.

The World is our Voyeur

We're all just voyeurs at heart. We seem to love to read about other people's lives. There are seemingly millions of "mom blogs" out there that update us on every tiny shriek their children make as well as flood the blogosphere with an obscene amount of giveaways for all this mom/child related stuff (which admittedly some of those things are VERY cool and I'm not even a parent). But yet...we read it. I got hooked on several blogs like this and I can't even relate, but I loved watching their lives pan out. I personally don't watch reality TV, but America in general has embraced all forms of voyeurism: reality television, blogs, memoir, they're all the hottest, sexiest things to come around the past 10 or so years. Really puts the whole deal with Mrs. Kravits into perspective.

However similar in terms of voyeuristic recreation, blogs seem to be a breed separate from the memoirs though, they seem to be more raw. There are not hours of agonizing editing and fighting with one sentence--one word: "is it better this way? Or this? No, the other way...no wait!" before sending it off to be published. Publishing is at the world's manic fingertips and many of us are taking advantage of it.

We do have creative nonfiction/memoirs where we get our kicks watching Augusten Burroughs' mother have another breakdown, or Sarah Thyre's mother who sips martinis with her friends during her prayer group, but it's different from blogs. Creative non-fiction has been edited, it is unadulterated hyperbole for effect, it is a story crafted over and over to entertain whereas blogs are more often than not, quickly written and whatever creative genius gets tossed in, great. Because I don't know about you but I'm not going to spend an entire day editing a blog post to squeeze as much wit out as I can for the sake of entertainment. What you see is what you get, right?

Blogs being more raw also means that blogs are often posted in "real time" so people can follow from day to day, live the suspense, watch real, live soap operas while also getting recommendations for exterminators from their local blogger friends. It's instant gratification plus one exterminator.

Meanwhile, I have anticipated David Sedaris' new book for well over a year AND I have cockroaches the size of hubcaps colonizing in my bathroom.